Pasadena OKs Panel’s Hillside Plan

Almost a year after creating a Hillside Task Force, city directors have approved its first recommendations to prevent excessive hillside grading.

The directors agreed to several revisions of the city’s hillside grading ordinance, including adding a provision that the city hire a licensed engineer to review grading plans submitted by developers. Also, developers will be required to submit soil and water drainage reports, plus grading plans certified by an engineer.

The directors also approved revisions that call for the city to inspect a site up to eight times, an increase from the current two inspections per grading permit. Grading permits will be required for steep lots anywhere in the city, not just those in designated hillside zones.

Also changed was the grading permit fee, which previously was based on a sliding scale. Now a flat $2,177 will be charged per permit.

The changes will help correct a chronic problem of inaccurate and inadequate grading plans that often were not followed, said City Planner Dean Sherer.

Linda Vista-Annandale residents who protested excessive hillside grading praised the new measures.

“A number of developers have turned in plans that were patently false,” said Brookes Treidler, task force chairman. “But the city didn’t have the expertise” to discover it, he said. “There was really no one on the city staff who could review a grading plan.”

Concern over hillside grading began about four years ago, when developers ran out of flat hillside parcels and began building on steep lots, Treidler said.

At the Linda Vista-Annandale Assn.’s urging, city directors created the task force last April to recommend safeguards. The group is now working on revisions to the city’s hillside development ordinance.